A community pharmacy can be needed by almost everyone around it and still struggle to keep its doors open.
There is a great deal being asked of community pharmacy: more clinical work, more services and more responsibility. At the same time, many independent and small-group pharmacy owners are trying to make the numbers work, support their teams and families, and find enough time to do the job properly with fewer resources than they need.
Getting a prescription dispensed is a crucial part of that work. It does not, however, complete the experience of the person receiving it. And it should not be where the value of that relationship ends.
Much of my experience in this sector comes from delivering medicines for my local community pharmacy, which I have been doing since May 2025. I have also spent time behind the counter, speaking with the people doing the work, and moving between pharmacies and the people, families and care organisations they serve.
I come to this as an experienced small business owner. In my twenties, I owned a successful restaurant, and hospitality was a big part of my life for 15 years. I understand the work involved in serving customers, supporting a team and keeping a business going. My work has since moved towards operations and building businesses from the ground up: understanding what people need, how the work gets done and how to create something they value.
Today, as the founder of a pharmacy software business, those experiences colour what I notice and the questions I ask. I see the work it takes to get medicines ready, the customer service in the shop, the consultations taking place and the coordination needed in between. I also see what happens when medicines reach somebody’s door. Spending time across those different parts of the service gives me a unique perspective I would not have from any one of them alone.
Funding matters. Of course it does. Good service needs good people, time, useful technology and money. There is no honest conversation about pharmacy’s future that leaves that out.
The pressure is not likely to ease simply because more is being asked of pharmacies. England’s 10 year Health Plan envisages community pharmacy playing a greater part in neighbourhood care and providing more clinical services. That is an opportunity. But owners still have to work out how to deliver it with the people, time and resources available to them.
This has made me think more deeply about the service as a whole.
Inside the pharmacy, dispensing, collection, delivery and customer questions can look like separate pieces of work, alongside consultations and other clinical services. To the person relying on the pharmacy, they are all part of the same service.
They want to know what is happening. They want to be able to get an answer. And when something needs sorting out for them, they want to trust that somebody will follow through.
The team has to make that happen while keeping track of what is ready, what has left the dispensary, where it has gone and what still needs attention - all while helping people at the counter, answering the telephone and providing services.
In the pharmacies I spend time in, parts of that work sit across different systems, paper records and conversations between members of staff. If one person does not know what another has done, something can be missed, delayed or forgotten.
At a recent Community Pharmacy England IT Group meeting, I heard frustration about how many systems pharmacy teams have to move between to get their work done. It put some of what I see day to day into a wider context.
It is the owners and their teams who bridge those gaps: checking another system, finding a note or asking a colleague what happened, often with somebody waiting for an answer. Each gap in information can return as another question, another phone call or another thing for somebody else to chase. The customer is left waiting, and the team has more work to do.
This matters commercially too.
Community pharmacies deliver publicly funded care, but they are also private businesses. Profit is essential. Owners need enough income to pay their people, cover costs and make a reasonable return. Being busy and being needed do not automatically make that possible.
More prescriptions and more services do not always mean more profit. The pharmacy still has to manage the work well and make it worthwhile. Time spent repeatedly chasing an answer or picking up an unfinished task is time the business has to find and pay for. It is also time the owner and team cannot spend making the service better.
I can understand why, under that pressure, it might feel as though the only option is to wait for the next decision about funding. We absolutely need fair funding. But owners also need room to ask: with what we have today, how do we make the work run better, take our service further and give more people a reason to choose us?
Nobody else is going to make that plan for an individual pharmacy.
As pharmacists spend more time in consultations, the rest of the team takes on more of the everyday contact with customers collecting medicines, asking questions and waiting for deliveries.
There is real value in that connection. It is the personal touch: being recognised, being listened to and knowing that someone will take care of what you have asked.
For some customers, that relationship is built through regular visits to the pharmacy. For others, it happens over the telephone, through a family member collecting on their behalf or through a care team helping them manage their medicines. For people receiving deliveries at home, the driver may be the person from the pharmacy they see most often and often the only person they interact with all day.
The people at the counter and the drivers arriving at people’s doors are part of the same service. How they speak with somebody, the care they take, the information they can offer and what happens after a request is made all shape how that person feels about the pharmacy.
What builds trust is doing those things consistently over time. When people know they can ask a question and somebody will follow through, they have a reason to keep choosing that pharmacy and to recommend it. That relationship can have commercial value, as well as human value.
Being close to a community has always been one of pharmacy’s strengths. It still matters. But being nearby does not guarantee that people will choose you. In many cases, service can - and often does - outweigh distance.
To me, delivering medicines is an opportunity to take the pharmacy’s personal service onto people’s doorsteps and further into their lives. It can help a pharmacy stay close to people who may rarely come through its doors, and reach others beyond the immediate neighbourhood. But taking the service further only works if the people providing it have the support to deliver it well.
Can the person at the counter or the driver give somebody a clear answer? Can they pass on a concern and know it will reach the right person? Can the team see whether a request has been followed through? Can a driver get out on their round without spending time chasing the information they need?
Those are practical questions for the customer and the business. Getting them right can mean less chasing for the team, more confidence for the person relying on the pharmacy and a service the business can provide more widely without making every working day harder.
Proper funding and government support remain necessary. But a pharmacy also has choices to make about the service it wants to be known for. What are customers asking the people at the counter? What are families and care teams trying to sort out? What do drivers hear on the doorstep?
Listen to those answers, then make a plan and a promise that your team can actually deliver.
That is how we begin to take a more active role in what comes next: making it easier for people to rely on the pharmacy, giving them a reason to choose it and making the work worthwhile for the people providing it.
People need their medicines and services. What gives them a reason to choose your pharmacy?